


I am not Shirley Holmes

by silence_since_silence



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Female John, Female Sherlock, Gen, Genderbending, Injury, Kidnapping, Male Sarah, Modern Era, Near-Death Experience, No Dialogue, Remaining eerily calm in a stressful situation, Restraints, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:27:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silence_since_silence/pseuds/silence_since_silence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Johnna Watson and her date for the night (and new boss) Siran Sawyer are taken by members of a gang of international smugglers to a secret underground location for interrogation by the gang's leader. What the smugglers do not know is that they kidnapped the wrong person. They interrogate Johnna as if she is Shirley Holmes, and nothing she says will convince them otherwise. How ever will Johnna and Siran escape with their lives?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am not Shirley Holmes

**Author's Note:**

> It will help you understand this work so much if you watch the last 15 minutes of "The Blind Banker" (starting around 1:14:00).
> 
> **Trigger Warning:** If anything in this section of "The Blind Banker" is something you like to avoid, then avoid this work in a similar way. See the tags.
> 
> I changed Sarah's gender/sex because I wanted to keep the relationships' gender dynamic: two friends/housemates of the same gender (that the public can speculate about all it wants) and a third character (who is a romantic/sexual interest) of a different gender. However, because the only characterization differences between Sarah and Siran are found in their anatomy, feel free to imagine Siran as his original Sarah if it pleases you to do so.
> 
> Some liberties have been taken with the order of details of the interrogation. Maybe some other details, too.
> 
> There are no contractions in this work.

Link. There was something about a link. Was that a link in a chain? Or was it a link in the case? How could she possibly have thought I would understand what she was mumbling about links?

Maybe she did not say anything about links, now that I think of it. Maybe that was somebody else. But who would it have been? Was it my imagination?

Hang on.

It smells like nothing I have ever smelled before in here. Sure, I have smelled a wide variety of locations and they have all been _fascinating_ , let me assure you of that. In Afghanistan I could even smell the heat, in somewhat the same way that I can smell the rain on the pavement in London. London offers many disturbing trash smells that, had I not met Shirley, I never would have thought twice about. Unless they invaded my pleasant newspaper reading at a café or walk in the park, that is. Oh, who am I kidding? I noticed all of those smells. I was a soldier, remember? I am trained to pay attention to my surroundings. I still feel like a soldier when I am with Shirley. I still use my gun, at least. It would be best not to tell anyone about that little aspect of our crime fighting team. I would prefer that Lestrade and the rest of the Met were kept in the dark on that little topic. Big topic. Topic. _Weapon_. Whatever. I would simply prefer to keep myself out of jail, without any black marks on my record, and in possession of the tool that I am _well_ trained to use. I only use it when the situation is dire. Shirley found that out on the first case I ever helped her with. Fool, she was, on that one. It made her quite giggly, though. That was nice to see. I remember it often, because it was so rare a sight. It _is_ so rare a sight. I like to see her happy. She would not like to see me now. I likely look a right mess. I can feel some liquid running down my face from my temple, and I have given up hope that there is any possibility that it is a hot fudge sundae. I am just glad that it is not my brains. (I figure I would know, or, I would not know, really, because I would not be thinking at all right now if my brains were leaking out my temple and down my face. I _am_ a doctor. As well as a soldier.)

I wish I could see straight. What was that about links, again?

Oh, the ground is coming into focus. That is nice. Now I see why I can smell dirt but no decay, and why I can practically feel a layer of dirt settle over my wound. (The throbbing is fairly distracting.) The ground is completely dirt. It smells stale down here. It is cold, perhaps even frigid. There is a muffled sound off to my left. My sight is not sharp yet, but there is a large shadow in front of me.

The shadow is a person. An old woman is smiling at me like she hates my guts. Lovely, now she has the barrel of a gun pointed at my face.

She thinks I am Shirley. Ha! _I am_ not _Shirley Holmes_ , I tell her. She does not believe me. Why does she not believe me? Okay, I can admit that her list of evidence is compelling. However, I _do_ have some other identification in that wallet that she is very clearly ignoring in favor of the solution she prefers. Huh. Maybe Shirley is rubbing off on me after all. She would be so pleased.

The old woman gestures to my left. Siran. Oh, I am sorry, Siran. This was definitely not what I had in mind for our date. I would have preferred a nice dinner and a movie. Shirley. Again. Manipulating me. Why did she have to suggest attending a damn circus performance? A circus performance, I might add, run by and peopled by a gang of international smugglers. It was really more like art anyway. I knew Shirley’s dating advice would be crap. I trusted her anyway. Well, she has never led me astray before. I will follow my gut on the dating plans next time. If a next time ever arises. That gun is still pointed straight at my face. Siran, I am so sorry. I try to tell him with my eyes. He looks terrified.

Shirley, _find us._

This woman is the leader? Black Lotus General? Is it wrong that I want to compare body counts with her? I, a soldier and doctor, an army doctor, and she, the leader of a smuggling ring that has a body count of two _so far, if Siran and I are lucky_ , on this case alone, swapping body counts. Then again, she is quite a bit older than me. At least fifteen years. She would probably win that conversation. I would love to hear her stories, though.

I am a little bit disappointed at this tangent for occurring to me in this moment. I should really be focusing on trying to get Siran away from that contraption. I just cannot seem to focus on my goal. I suppose I am a bit in shock at this turn of events.

Shirley. Bloody hell, finally!

Shirley, I have just been reprimanding myself for going on tangents. This _really_ is not the time for things like that. Shut up and get us out of here, you twit.

Siran only has eyes for the contraption we saw nearly kill a chained up man earlier at the circus. He is crying. I cannot find fault in his reaction at all. What have they put in his hand? Origami? I will have to ask Shirley about that later. Right now, the sand bag is lowering and Shirley is only halfway to us. Knocking over a rubbish bin? Really? Mycroft did say she has a flair for the dramatic. They both do, if I am being honest. I am the one with a flair for heroics. I guess Shirley has that, too, now I think about it. It is _her_ here rescuing us instead of the police. It would not be like her to call the police without attempting a rescue herself.

Shirley has taken out one guard and one light source out of three. Where did the old woman run off to? Perhaps she is somewhere behind me in a location that I cannot see. I wonder if this place we are in is a dead end or a full tunnel. I cannot tell from the echoes; the rounded walls are throwing me off. Not to mention I have a head wound that has already proven to be bad enough to be interfering with at least one of my senses. Shirley is behind Siran trying to untie him, but Soo Lin’s brother is making that task quite difficult. I have got to get in there. If only I were not tied to this damn chair!

Hobbling. I cannot believe I am hobbling with a chair strapped to my back.

Dammit.

Well. That did not last long. Note to self number two for the night: practice balancing. The skill could come in handy during another case some day.

I wonder how many things Shirley knows because she thought that the information could come in handy during a case. Likely everything. That seems to me to be the point. She needs to know everything that could possibly have anything to do with a case at some point – at any point ever – in the future, the present, and/or the past. How does she even think of all of the options? I mean, tobacco ash? What the hell could that be useful for? Plus, she said it herself the first day we looked at the flat together: “impossible to sustain a smoking habit in London.” I guess not all of her cases are in London, though.)

Right, I have tried being friendly with this contraption. I only wanted to get the giant, wood- and human-piercing arrow off the runway. Now I am lying on my side on the ground. If I could just shift around, maybe I could turn it. Surely it does not travel as fast as a bullet. When she first started speaking, Shirley rattled off some fast math to the old woman about the probability of bullets ricocheting off the curved tunnel walls. Surely the arrow would not travel fast enough to bounce around toward one of us if I could get it shooting off at the correct angle to the right. I could get it to go toward the open mouth of our tunnel and into the next one down. I could get it far away from all of us.

There is no way I can angle it that direction from down here. There is no way I can angle it that direction from this side of it with my hands tied and my body restrained to a chair on the ground. What do I do? Maybe I should just kick it! _Ugh!_

Oh. That worked out nicely. It missed Siran. I am glad it missed Shirley as well. It went straight into the brother. The Chinese Bird-Spider, I think his circus name was. _Was_ is the important word, here. He no longer has a career. He no longer has his life. I wonder if that body goes to my count, since I kicked the contraption, or to the old woman’s count, since she put the contraption there in the first place. I am adding it to mine, since she is running off down… the… other tunnel. Well, bugger-all.

No, really. Bugger-all. What did we just go through all that for? I have a head wound, Shirley has been nearly choked to death, and Siran has just all but had a heart attack from facing a death Shirley or I would have been much better equipped to deal with (whether because of my stress training or her ability to find a way out of any situation – and I mean any situation; there is nothing that woman cannot think or maneuver her way out of). (Let us just all agree that) Siran looks the most emotionally worse for the wear at the moment. Shirley will likely have a pout later about not catching the “bad guy.” (She would hate that I cannot think of a less childish word, even after the high-stress kidnapping and assault that I have just endured. _Vocabulary standards, Johnna! Are you or are you not currently working to write up some of my cases?_ she would say. Maybe she will say that later. I prefer to leave the thesaurus closed. I like to write in my own authentic vocabulary for stories. Academic vocabulary was for academia. My medical practice is, obviously, the exception.) I will enjoy that.

I suppose this _is_ sort of an awkward time to make a joke about another date. I should have saved that one for when he was fully untied. There is nothing I can do about it now, though. Hopefully the hint of normal within the joke helps Siran calm down. We should get away from here, though.

Being untied is a relief. I was starting to get a cramp in my shoulder. Shirley says the police outside have a paramedic with them to look at my head wound. I would ask Siran to do it if he were less shaken up. It occurs to me that he may not be able to hold a needle straight if I need stitches. We are going to have one hell of a time at work tomorrow. I wonder if I should suggest that we take the day off.

I wrap my arm around him and pull him tight as we leave the tunnels, then again as we leave the police behind. I do not know how Shirley expects the paramedics to keep off of their restock list all of the materials they had to use to clean me up, but I suppose a little lie about using them for one of the two smuggling gang members lying still on the ground of the tunnel will cover it up. I feel bad for whoever gets yelled at, though, if their boss notices what _exactly_ was used and sees that something does not add up. I hope nobody looks too closely at the paperwork.

****

**_Late the next morning...._ **

I knew Shirley would be put out about this. She solved it. She knew where the pin was. She held it in her hand. (We were handsomely rewarded for the speedy effort we put into solving the break-in aspect of the case, which pleases me greatly.) Still, she does not like the fact that the Black Lotus general escaped our clutches. I notice that she deems this case as a win for her and not the old woman, just as I did with our (the old woman’s and my) body counts in the tunnel.

Shirley takes out her irritation on the newspaper she is reading. If I were more superstitious, I would tell her not to jostle the paper so much or it might decide to hide our next case from her. She would never stand for such a thought. It is too illogical. It is too fantastical.

Through the window I see a tagger paint something that looks like an eye. It looks like a warning. Shirley might not think that that deduction is illogical, but I doubt she will care about the warning at all. I look back at her. Mycroft has left the flat already, and that seems to have calmed her irritation. Siblings. I just hope Mycroft noticed the tag once he was out in the street. As much as Shirley hates Mycroft’s meddling in her affairs, I worry about her, too, and I very much appreciate having all the help I can get when it comes to keeping her safe.

**Author's Note:**

> It must have been the smugglers talking about links on the ride to the Tramway. Johnna does not deem it important enough to think about or remember later.


End file.
